Issue 0 file pathing and environments

[rphovley]

The Pull Request is ready

• [x] all github actions are passing
• [x] only a single issue was worked on
• [x] fixes #0
• [x] the branch follows the naming schema issue-123-enable-x-does-not-disable-y
• [x] the pull request has a sensible title

Intention

With this change I intend to fix the file paths that are broken on local development. Also did some cleanup on environment variables and fixed some logging issues I introduced

Review Points

Please take extra care reviewing...

The code follows best practices

• [x] duplicate code has been extracted where possible
• [x] issues for follow-up tasks have been created
• [x] tests have been written for any new functionality
• [x] there is no any type used
• [x] texts have been checked for grammar and spelling issues

Notes